Pehlwani

• 1. Introduction

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  Pehlwani is a form of wrestling born from the meeting of two worlds: the ancient South Asian art of malla-yuddha, practiced since at least the 5th millennium BC, and the Persian Koshti traditions carried into the subcontinent by the Mughal conquerors. The result was something entirely new, carrying a name that announces its ambitions. Pehlwani means "heroic wrestling". Its practitioners are called pehlwan, from the Persian word for hero. Their teachers are ustad or guru, meaning master. This is not a sport that undersells itself.

  By the time the Mughal Empire reshaped northern South Asia in the 16th century, wrestling was already woven into the oldest stories the region told about itself. Both the Mahabharata and the Ramayana contain references to wrestling. The great Persian epic the Shahnama holds wrestling at its heart too, with the hero Rustam as the tradition's supreme champion. That name would eventually become a title awarded to the greatest kushti wrestlers in India and Pakistan. The questions worth asking are: how did a wrestling form survive two massive cultural shifts, what does a day in the life of a pehlwan actually look like, and which names rose high enough to earn those legendary titles?

• 2. Mughal Roots and Cultural Survival

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  Babur, the first Mughal emperor, was himself a wrestler who could reportedly run for long distances at speed while carrying a man under each arm. His dynasty brought Iranian and Mongolian wrestling traditions into contact with malla-yuddha, and over generations the older form was largely displaced by Persian Koshti. Yet the displacement was never total. The aspects of malla-yuddha that survived did so inside the akhara, the wrestling academy. Students there were expected to be vegetarian, to cook, to maintain the facility, and to remain celibate. These were the customs of the older tradition, preserved in the institution even as the techniques on the mat changed.

  Mughal-era wrestlers sometimes competed in a variation called naki ka kushti, or claw wrestling, in which fighters wore bagh naka on one hand. That detail alone tells you something about how fluid the sport's rules once were. Later, during the late 17th century, a religious figure named Ramadasa travelled across the country urging Hindus toward physical fitness as devotion to the god Hanuman. The gada, or mace, became one of the core training tools of pehlwani partly because of that association. Trophies awarded to champions are shaped as gada, made of silver and gold. The Maratha rulers reinforced the sport further by offering large sums of prize money for tournament champions. It was said at the time that every Maratha boy could wrestle and even women took up the sport.

  Colonial-era princes kept the tradition alive through patronage, hosting matches and competitions across the subcontinent. Wrestling was the favourite spectator sport of the Rajputs, who were said to look forward to tournaments with great anxiety. Every Rajput prince or chief maintained a roster of wrestling champions to compete for his entertainment. The greatest wrestling centres of that era were said to be Uttar Pradesh and the Punjab region.

• 3. The Daily Life of a Pehlwan

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  A training day in pehlwani begins at three in the morning. The wrestler rises and performs press-ups, known as danda, and squats, known as bethak, sometimes reaching as many as four thousand repetitions. This is followed by a five-mile run, then swimming, then lifting stones and sandbags. By eight in the morning, teachers watch as trainees wrestle each other in earth pits continuously for three hours, which amounts to roughly twenty-five matches in a row. Senior wrestlers go first; the youngest go last. At eleven, an oil massage precedes rest. At four in the afternoon, another massage, then two more hours of wrestling. By eight at night, the wrestler is asleep.

  The physical training is called virayam. The regimen has remained largely unchanged for over a hundred and fifty years. Fledgling wrestlers may begin as early as age six, though most start formal training in their teens. Their only training attire is the kowpeenam, a loincloth. The exercises they perform draw on a tradition that overlaps with hatha yoga: the Surya Namaskara, shirshasana, and the danda all appear in both disciplines. Sawari, a word derived from the Persian term for "passenger," describes the practice of using another person's body weight to add resistance to these exercises.

  The equipment pehlwans use has its own vocabulary. The nal is a hollow stone cylinder with a handle inside. The gar nal is a circular stone ring worn around the neck to add resistance to squats and dips. The gada is a heavy round stone fixed to the end of a meter-long bamboo stick. Indian clubs, known as mugdar, are wooden and come in pairs. Karl Gotch, one of the legendary wrestlers of a more recent era, made tours to India to learn kushti and was gifted a pair of mugdar. Additional exercises include dhakuli, which are twisting rotations, along with rope climbing, log pulling, and running. Massage is considered as essential to the regimen as any of these.

  A practitioner aims toward a state called jivanmukti, a form of self-realization. Spiritual concepts run through the training from the beginning, not as an add-on but as the stated goal of the practice.

• 4. Food as Philosophy

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  The pehlwani diet draws directly from the Samkhya school of Hindu philosophy, which sorts everything in the universe into three gunas: sattva, which is calm and good; rajas, which is passionate and active; and tamas, which is dull and lethargic. Wrestling, being a vigorous activity, is inherently rajasic. The pehlwan's dietary answer is to eat sattvic foods to balance that energy.

  Milk, ghee, and almonds constitute what the tradition calls the holy trinity of the pehlwani khurak, the wrestler's diet. The word khurak comes from the Persian. A common snack is chickpeas that have been sprouted overnight in water and seasoned with salt, pepper, and lemon; even the water left from sprouting the chickpeas is considered nutritious. The Indian wrestling monthly Bharatiya Kushti has recommended a specific list of fruits: apples, wood-apples, bananas, figs, pomegranates, gooseberries, lemons, and watermelons. Orange juice and green vegetables are also encouraged. Many pehlwans do eat meat for its protein content; the famed pehlwan Dara Singh reportedly consumed more than a pound of meat every day.

  The list of foods to avoid is equally specific. Sour and excessively spiced foods, chatni, achar, and chaat are discouraged. Mild seasoning with garlic, cumin, coriander, and turmeric is acceptable. Alcohol, tobacco, and paan are strongly discouraged. The diet is not only practical nutrition; it is an expression of a philosophical stance about how to live.

• 5. The Rules of the Pit

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  Wrestling competitions in pehlwani are called dangal, or simply kushti. They are held in villages and the rules are variable and flexible. The arena is either circular or square, measuring at least fourteen feet across. The floor is not a modern mat. South Asian wrestlers train and compete on dirt. Before training, the floor is raked of any pebbles or stones, then sprinkled with buttermilk, oil, and red ochre, which gives the dirt its distinctive red hue. Water is added every few days to maintain the right consistency: soft enough to prevent injury, firm enough so as not to impede movement. Before every match, wrestlers throw a few handfuls of dirt on themselves and on their opponent as a form of blessing.

  There are no rounds. The length of each bout is agreed in advance, usually between twenty-five and thirty minutes. If both competitors agree, a match may be extended, typically by ten to fifteen minutes. There is no point-scoring system. Victory comes by pinning the opponent's shoulders and hips to the ground simultaneously, though knockout, stoppage, and submission are also valid. In some rule variations, pinning only the shoulders is sufficient. Competitors may wander outside the ring boundaries during a match without penalty. A referee works inside the ring, and two judges watch from outside.

  The techniques themselves are primarily locks, throws, pins, and submission holds. Unlike malla-yuddha, kushti does not permit strikes or kicks. Among the most favoured moves are the dhobi paat, a shoulder throw, and the kasauta, a strangle pin. Two fundamental concepts underpin the entire technical system: paintra, which is the wrestler's stance and footing on the ground, and daw-pech, which covers the full range of feints and counter-moves. Reading the opponent is considered as important as any individual technique.

• 6. Titles and Champions

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  The championship titles of kushti carry the name Rustam, borrowed directly from the legendary hero of the Persian Shahnama. The Rustam-e-Hind title, meaning "Champion of India," was the most prestigious domestic honour, and Vishnupant Nagrale was the first wrestler ever to hold it. The Rustam-e-Zaman, meaning "World Champion," was rarer still. The Great Gama, whose full name was Ghulam Mohammad Baksh Butt, earned that title when he defeated Stanislaus Zbyszko in 1910. The Great Gama had already become Rustam-e-Hind in 1898, and his earlier victories in London against Ben Roller and Stanley Zbyzsko had announced him to a wider world. He is considered one of the greatest wrestlers of all time.

  In the Punjab during the 1930s, the pahelwani scene included around five hundred skilled wrestlers, according to former wrestler Ranjit Singh, also known by the pseudonym Bhu Pinder, and the majority were Sikhs or Muslims. In the late 1880s and early 1890s, two heavyweight wrestlers named Kala Partapa and Gora Partapa were renowned across the Malwa region of Punjab. In 1918, a wrestler named Goonga Pahelwan defeated the Great Gama's nephew, Gama Kalloo, causing considerable stir in the wrestling world.

  Beyond the Rustam titles, the championship structure includes the Maharashtra Kesari, the Lion of Maharashtra, with Narsinh Yadav winning that title three times. The Hind Kesari has its own roll of winners, including Harishchandra Birajdar of Maharashtra in 1969, Krishan Kumar in 1986, Amol Barate in 2013, and Sunil Salunkhe in 2015. An unusual unofficial honour called the Amazon of Aligarh was given to a female wrestler named Hamida Banu in the first half of the 20th century. India's wrestling peak came at the fourth Asian Games in 1962, known later as the Jakarta Games, when all seven Indian wrestlers reached the medal list and together won twelve medals across freestyle and Greco-Roman competition.

• 7. A Sport That Traveled

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  Pehlwani is one of the sports credited with influencing catch wrestling, which in turn partially shaped freestyle wrestling, folkstyle wrestling, and mixed martial arts. The conditioning exercises of pehlwani have been incorporated into both catch wrestling and shoot wrestling, along with their derivative systems. That is a long chain of influence stretching from the Mughal-era dirt pits of northern India into the modern combat sports landscape.

  The Jabbar-er Boli Khela tournament, started in 1909 by a Bengali merchant named Abdul Jabbar Saudagar, illustrates another kind of reach. His original intention was to unite local youth and inspire resistance to British colonial rule through a display of physical strength. That competition survived independence and the partition that followed, and it continues to be held in Bangladesh every Boishakhi Mela, the Bengali new year, accompanied by the playing of the traditional sanai and dabor. It is one of Chittagong's oldest surviving traditions.

  Pehlwans competing today are also known to cross-train in the grappling aspects of judo and jujutsu. The sport has absorbed outside influences while also exporting its own. Balbir Singh Kanwal has authored multiple books on the history of Punjabi wrestling, preserving a record of practitioners and contests that might otherwise be lost. India hosted the world wrestling championships in New Delhi in 1967, at a moment when the country was ranked among the first eight or nine wrestling nations in the world.